Perhaps the greatest ongoing sports story that almost nobody knows about is the New Jersey Devils‘ rise from the ashes to playoff contention over the last five plus weeks. It’s a story very few know because a) it’s hockey; b) because the Devils have but a small (though very dedicated) fan base; and c) it’s New Jersey, and nobody seems to care much about New Jersey if it doesn’t have to do with the Boss or the mob (or Chris Christie these days).

On January 8 the Devils had completed a four-game losing streak in which they fell to a league worst 10-29-2 and 27 points out of the playoffs. They were so bad that the next-worst team in the league, the New York Islanders, still had 10 more points than the Devils. This was uncharted territory in recent Devils history, as they had been a perennial powerhouse since the mid-1990s, led by Lou Lamoriello, the team’s president and general manager (one Devils fan blog is named In Lou We Trust). In their first 41 games, the Devils had scored only 72 goals (the next lowest league output was 93).

It looked like it was back to the past for the Devils, and that the team had written off the season. I am as life long a Devils fan as there is–I was at the Devils home opener in 1982 against the Pittsburgh Penguins, a 3-3 tie that was one of the few bright spots in a season that ended with a record of 17-49-14–and bleed New Jersey Devil red to my core. The Devils first shining moment came in 1987-88, when they became the darlings of the league. They posted their first winning record and finished the campaign 7–0–1 in their final eight games to clinch a playoff birth in their final game by scoring a miracle overtime victory on a goal in Chicago by John MacLean. (The eighth and final seed, they advanced to the conference finals, before bowing out in a bizarre series against the Bruins.)

There’s a certain morbid symmetry between that season and this one. John MacLean was named coach of the Devils last June, but he led the team to a putrid 9-22-2 start before getting fired in typical Devils fashion (if my math adds up, it’s the Devils’ seventh in-season coaching change!). He was replaced by coaching legend Jacques Lemaire, who started poorly, posting a 1-7 record in his first eight games.

But, then, voila! The Devils started to click.

Over the last 18 games, the Devils have posted an unbelievable 15-1-2 record, behind a resurgent offense, led by $102 million man Ilya Kovalchuk, who was booed during much of the early part of the season but who now has a team leading 7 game winning goals, and Johan (Moose) Hedberg, who in his first season with the team has had to step up with the injury of all-time NHL goaltending wins leader Martin Brodeur and who has won six starts in a row (the team has seven consecutive wins). With three wins against the current #8 seed Carolina in 11 days, the Devils remarkably have closed within 10 points of the playoffs with 23 games left.

Devils fans are giddy; after the shutout of the archrival New York Rangers last Friday nearly 1,800 (including me) of the Devils’ 140,000 Facebook followers liked the Devils status update. While some Devils fans are still cautious, calculating that the Devils will have had to go an unheard of 33-6-2 to end the season just to make the playoffs and even lament that the team didn’t just tank instead of giving all of us die-hards false hope, others have said that you can’t count them out and that they are the team nobody wants to play.

While the mountain is still huge and the odds of making their making the playoffs is still low, as Mike Hume blogs at ESPN, “it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility. And after the way the Devils started the season, that’s not too shabby.” One fan even has a Devils Playoff Death Watch, which applies scientific principles to their unlikely playoff run (if you can follow the complicated math he seems to be using).

Over on “In Lou We Trust,” Matthew Ventolo gives five reasons why the Devils will and won’t make the playoffs. Fortunately, as a Kool Aid drinker, he put the five reasons why they won’t at the bottom of the post, so I never seemed to be able to get that far. Since I am a Cubs fan who thinks the Cubbies are going to win the World Series this season, you probably shouldn’t pay me much mind, but the Devils have been a team of miracle runs, and if I had a few bucks to spare to bet on whether or not they’d make the playoffs, I’d never bet against Lou’s club.